This invention relates to a computer-based music apparatus and systems for music composition, and more particularly to an automatic apparatus and method for composing chord progressions for melody harmonization.
An automatic chord progression composer or melody harmonizer is known which composes a chord progression to harmonize a given melody (for instance, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Kokai Sho58-87593, U.S. Pat. No. 4,951,544, U.S. Pat. No. 4,539,882, and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Kokai Hei2-197885).
For instance, an apparatus described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,951,544 subdivides a melody into a plurality of segments. It creates a number of chord candidates for a melody segment of interest based on pitch contents thereof. Then, it determines or selects one of the candidates as a chord for the melody segment according to music progression rules of tonal distance between one melody segment to another.
Either of the prior art chord progression composers, however, involves fixed rules or criteria for composing a chord progression. Thus, their process of composing a chord progression is completely or essentially deterministic for a given melody so that their composing capability is greatly limited.